Getting the Creative Juices Flowing: How to Squeeze the Ideas out of Yourself

You are full of creative energy. You feel the need to create something, anything, no matter how long it takes. You've got the spark, and you feel you'll go crazy if you don't use it. You go over to your desk, or you pick up your laptop, or you enter your studio. You approach the drawing board, take a deep breath, crack your knuckles and your neck.

A blank canvas. An empty page. A gray lump of clay. Whatever your medium is, you stare at it. You start shaking. You walk away from it, then come back. You tilt your head from side to side, you squint, you shake your hands out and maybe do a few yoga poses.

But each time you return to it, from any angle and any distance, it is the scariest thing you have ever seen. Suddenly, you feel about as creative as a cucumber. You even smack yourself for the bad simile. Every storage of inspiration within you seems locked behind the door of a giant fortress, and you're standing outside with a water balloon and a violin bow, wondering how the heck you'll ever get in.

Sound familiar? This torment is common to creative minds, be they painters, sculptors, writers, poets, or glass blowers. Creator's Block is more than frustrating. It's depressing, outrageous, obscene, and gaudy. It spurs the questions that keep you up at night. It makes you doubt your life, your choices, your very existence. But you have to overcome it, or else the creative energy within you will curdle, grow mold, and decay, and then you've lost it forever.

Here are some tips on scaling the walls of that fortress and unearthing the treasure you seek.

Rough Drafts
No one said your project has to be perfect the first time around. You most likely have a lot going on in your mind and haven't quite figured out how it all links together. Rough drafts may help you figure out what your creation will be by showing you what it isn't. Forget the canvas, the paper, the clay. Get a piece of scrap paper--it's much less intimidating--and just start sketching. Write down that first paragraph. Don't go back over and edit, just dump out the junk drawer that is your mind.